Page 49 of The Thirteenth Count

Dearest Mother, Father,

Do not come. Do not answer any summons. Whatever they offer you, refuse it. The Keep is not what we thought. It’s a machine, and it feeds on us.

I am safe for now. But you must hide. Tell Ashford Cross—the tithes are not enough. They will never be enough.

Burn this letter. Burn it and run.

Your loving daughter,

Fern

It was treason. A death sentence. And the only thing she could do.

Since the night in the Veins, Fern had barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the copper vats. She saw the cobbler, Rowan Sheely, slumped in that chair, a tube running from his arm like a fat leech. She heard the thrum-thump of the pumps in the walls.

She folded the parchment, sealing it with a dab of wax from her candle. She had no signet ring, no Blackwell crest to give it authority. It was just a desperate scrap of parchment.

Please let it be enough.

But she had a way to send it. Or… she hoped she did.

Willem had told her once, in passing, about the supply wagons that came up from the valley midweek. The drivers will take anything for a handful of chips, he’d said with a grin. Letters, contraband, love notes to the miller’s daughter.

It was exactly the middle of the week.

Fern slipped the letter into her bodice, right against her heart. She grabbed her cloak—the heavy wool one—and moved to the door.

She peered into the hallway. Empty.

The third bell had just ceased its tolling, the deep iron notes vibrating through the floorboards. It was mid-afternoon, the time when Cassius was usually sequestered with the High, and Fern was expected to be in the main study, transcribing the Structura Sanguis.

But the corridors were quiet, save for the ever-present draft. She slipped out, locking the door behind her.

Fern moved quickly. She didn’t take the main stairs; she took the narrow service spiral Willem had shown her during her first week. It wound down through the stone spine of the Keep, bypassing the portrait gallery and the judging eyes of Blackwell ancestors.

She reached the courtyard level. A wall of cold hit her first, biting and sharp, carrying the earthy stink of manure and damp hay.

She pushed open the heavy wooden door to the stables.

The South Gate was open—a rarity. Beyond the iron portcullis, the service road known as the Serpent’s Coil wound down the mountainside. It was treacherous, narrow, and the only way for heavy freight to reach the Keep without shattering the delicate glass of the blood carriages.

The courtyard was busy. Men were unloading crates of root vegetables and barrels of ale from two large wagons that looked as if they’d dissolved into mud and reformed halfway up the climb. Horses stamped their feet, their breath steaming in the frigid air.

Fern pulled her hood up, keeping her head down. She made herself small, just another servant girl in a grey dress.

She scanned the yard. There. A driver was leaning against the wheel of the lead wagon, lighting a pipe. He was older, with a weathered face and thick beard frosted with rime.

Fern took a breath and stepped away from the shelter of the doorway.

“Excuse me,” she said, pitching her voice low.

The driver looked down, squinting at her. “Lost, miss? Kitchens are that way.”

“I have a letter,” Fern said, reaching into her bodice. She pulled out the folded parchment and a small cloth pouch she had found in a dusty crevice of the service stair. A servant’s lost wages, perhaps, forgotten in the dark. It clicked softly with a handful of wooden chips.

“For Ashford Cross. The Grovekeeper’s cottage.”

The driver’s eyes narrowed. He snatched the pouch from her fingers, shaking it in his palm. He counted the simple wooden tokens, biting one to test the grain. He grinned, revealing gaps in his teeth.